Centralised waste treatment systems have proved to be impractical and a huge failure, P.K. Raveendran, academic and former president of the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad, has said.
He was speaking at a seminar on ‘Scope of decentralised waste management’ organised in connection with the Diamond Jubilee celebrations of the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad here on Tuesday.
“All centralised waste management projects including Lalur, Vilappilsala, Njeliyan Parambu, Vadavathur and Sarvodayapuram were huge a failure and were closed down. The Brahmapuram project is on the verge of closing down. A civilised society should not insist that the waste generated in its kitchen should be cleared by somebody else,” he said.
He said that the Malayali, who took pride in demolishing manual scavenging, is implementing another kind of scavenging. “Those who produce the waste at a house are responsible for treating it. The local bodies should act as centres, which create and control the infrastructure for decentralised management of waste,” he said.
“The centralised waste treatment will lead to water contamination in a State like Kerala, which has numerous water bodies. Unlike in the western countries, the moisture content in our organic waste is more. The average heat in our area is 30 degree Celsius. It is an appropriate condition for the microorganisms to multiply. It will create a severe stench also. So we need to cultivate a habit of treating the waste at source immediately by ourselves. We have technology for that,” he said.
